Long and Tiring Days

So I can hardly remember what day it was that I last posted something. The past couple of days have been a lot of the same. We had the same divers diving with us and the conditions were the same, which forced us to continue diving off the docks by the intern house. This meant for us interns lots of hauling gear and tanks around, and making sure everything is there for the guests. I didn't get to dive on Thursday and just sat at the docks waiting for them to return so that we could switch out tanks. Afterwards, once Marshall told Mike, Steve, and I we were done, we started walking back to the house. Halfway there, Patrick came up and asked us to come with him to help him out. We hopped in the boat with him and we went all the way to the next little bay. He finally told us what we were doing, which was picking up a boat he just bought. He pulled up to this grungy, dilapidated dock that had three extremely broke-down ghetto type boats. There were three locals there that didn't look to friendly that started talking to Patrick in Spanish. He pulled up to this sportfisher and started tying our boat to it. He then informs us that the sportfisher has no steering or motor. At this point I started envisioning all sorts of situations in which all the endings were bad. Steve and I ended up riding back in the sportfisher, which kinda freaked me out. The boat is quite nice, once you look past the rust, grime, and holes, but I was afraid to look around it because I thought a body was going to pop out somewhere. I seriously thought that we had just stolen a boat from a drug smuggler or something along those lines. I had no idea what was on that boat, I was just praying to get back to the docks without swimming there. Everything went well though and we made it back to the docks within an hour.
That night we decided to go th West End to get something to eat. There was this one place called Cannibal Cafe that supposedly had really good burritos. They were about $11 each, which is alot here, but they had a way around this. If you ordered three and ate all of them within an hour they are free. And you get a free t-shirt. I decided I was up for the challenge. The first burrito went down easy, and as the second one came out, I noticed that it had gotten slightly bigger. I got through that one and then had about 25 minutes to finish the last one. I got down to 5 minutes and only had 2 more inches to go. I somehow managed to force it down, even though I started gagging. Yes, I know how very disgusting this is. However, I finished the challenge, against everyone's expectations and walked away with my free t-shirt. Let me say the drive back in the bed of the truck was a little uncomfortable.
Friday was a little more stressful, however I did get to do 3 dives. Let me start with the morning first. I was told to stay at the house while everyone else went to the shop to get the gear and tanks. They wanted me to stay around to set up the gear once it came. There were three of the guests gear locked up in the owners garage. However, it was locked and the owner with the key was gone. Also I had no tanks so I couldn't get the gear ready. I waited at the house and was going to go down when I heard the truck come back. Anyway, I didn't hear it and the owner, Patrick, ran up to the house and preceded to yell at me for not having the gear ready on tanks. I told him I had no tanks to get ready and that I didn't have a key to get the few pieces of gear out of the garage. It really made me mad. I am not his employee and plus I couldn't do anything about it. Everything turned out well though and we left the docks with plenty of time.
The first dive was with the group of 6 people. It went really well, however I didn't see anything to memorable besides a large cowfish and a puffer. The second dive was on a wall called Cemetery Wall. It was really neat and had a dark, gloomy feeling about it. I saw a pipefish along with this tiny half inch fish which was a arrow blenny. The third dive was a neat one with lots of interlocking corals. I didn't see to much because there were so many different hiding places.


After the dives I went with Marshall to return the gear and tanks (there were 50 of them). On the way back we got in a traffic jam due to a wreck so we decided to stop at the Chinese food. There were several other interns with us that were at the stop to do their instructor course. When we got back I was so tired, and went straight to bed even though it was 8:30.
Luckily today was our day off...so I got to rest a little. However, I was completely out of food so got a ride to the grocery store with two other interns, Liz and Karson. We got our groceries and decided to walk to the next village to look at the food stalls. This ended up being a longer walk than we remembered but kept on walking regardless. It ended up being over a two mile walk, which I completed with my 30 pounds of groceries. From there we got a taxi and got back to the house.
Afterwards Liz, Steve, and I decided to go diving on the reef behind our house. We had planned this so we had kept 4 tanks and our gear at the house. We took two kayaks with our gear all the way around this mangrove island and then up the reef a bit. Then we jumped in the water and started our dive. It was an hour long dive which was along this beautiful wall. I saw three really large puffers which were over two feet long, along with a moray eel, a spotted drum and tons of my favorite red banded shrimp. We got back to the kayaks and paddled back to the docks. After we cleaned up our little adventure had lasted over 4 hours.

The rest of the day, I decided to make a pizza along with tres leche. They turned out great and now I am just enjoying them. Hopefully this coming week won't be so hectic since all the guests went home and only two new people are coming. Plus it helps that the weather looks like it will be nice.